A partnership for better mental health

Lack of transportation and child care, financial hardship, and the stigma frequently attached to mental health issues are among the many challenges people in marginalized communities face when it comes to obtaining necessary counseling services.

Lehigh’s graduate program in counseling psychology is working to diminish those challenges. Partnering with the Bethlehem Area School District and St. Luke’s Health Network, Lehigh’s Counseling Psychology program has formed the Community Voices Clinic (CVC), a community-schools-based training site for master’s and doctoral-level students in mental-health counseling and supervision. 

“If you provide services where the family is already coming, there’s not as much stigma – they have connections with the school, they feel comfortable. It’s just easier,” says Arpana Inman, professor of counseling psychology, licensed psychologist, and director of the CVC.

CVC opened in 2012, at Broughal Middle School and Donegan Elementary. St. Luke’s funds the clinic and the schools provide the space in which to operate. With Inman at the helm, the clinic is fully staffed by Lehigh graduate students – two doctoral supervisors and five to six master’s trainees – who incorporate evidence-based practice, multicultural competence, and social justice in their free therapy services to uninsured and underinsured residents of South Bethlehem. CVC also provides weekly group sessions for senior citizens and career counseling and vocational training at the Hispanic Center Lehigh Valley.

Doctoral student Bethany Perkins Detwiler ’11M.Ed. served as CVC’s program coordinator from the clinic’s opening until May 2014. A key player in its establishment, Detwiler was CVC’s only program coordinator during its first year. Detwiler also left her mark by providing the clinic with its name. The clinic made a lasting impression on her as well. 

“Being involved in the clinic was a major catalyst in my growth as a clinician and psychologist-in-training,” says Detwiler. “I felt as though my role with CVC truly encouraged my progression from student to professional, as I was pushed to take on a strong leadership and administrative role for the first time, as well as be intimately involved in the creation of a new clinic.” 

Indeed, the grassroots nature of CVC provides challenging yet invaluable on-the-job training for graduate students, who are involved with everything from creating forms to identifying needs and developing policies and procedures.

“It’s been quite an experience being here,” says doctoral student and clinic supervisor Linh Luu. “It feels like every day there’s something new that I can learn. I really have to think on my feet.”

“The clinic has created so many opportunities for my growth as a clinician,” says doctoral student Asmita Pendse, also a clinic supervisor.

Students must apply to participate in the clinic. Before applying to the yearlong internship, master’s students must complete 100 hours of practicum, during which they gain a feel for the work. Some life experience, flexibility, and the ability to deal with ambiguity are essential, says Inman, as students “have to learn everything at the same time.”

“It’s very rare that we have this hands-on experience working with the community and working with a multidisciplinary team in the community. We gain a different idea of what counseling should be and how much impact a counselor can make rather than just having an individual session behind closed doors,” says Luu.

CVC hopes to help provide integrated medical and mental health care by partnering further with the St. Luke’s family clinic at Donegan. This new partnership would allow clients to see a physician and, if needed, be referred immediately to a social worker and a counselor during that same visit. CVC’s ultimate goal is to work with the Hispanic Center, St. Luke’s, and other community organizations to create an integrated center for well-being, a larger-scale facility located in the Hispanic Center with a multi-disciplinary team of doctors, nurses, nutritionists, counselors, and psychologists. The center would operate as a site for inter-professional competency training and the schools would serve as satellite offices.

According to Inman, meeting people where they are – emotionally and physically – is essential for making an impact.

“If we can make it such that we meet their need rather than them trying to meet our need [in terms of scheduling and location], it makes more sense,” says Inman.

Though the rate varies, CVC typically schedules from 20 to 25 individual clients per week at the school-based clinics, which are open on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at Broughal and on Thursdays at Donegan. It’s a good start, says Inman, but they’d like to see more. The clinic relies heavily on word of mouth to obtain clients and has started to provide parenting workshops and sessions explaining the significance of mental health services in an effort to reach more community members. 

“Just meeting with our clients and seeing how appreciative they are of our work has humbled me. It was kind of a reality check that what we do can impact someone’s life so much. It gives me a broader sense of my role as a researcher and clinician,” says Pendse.

“Every moment I spent with this community, whether through providing therapy, supervising students in their therapy work, or in outreach activities, was significant,” says Detwiler. “It was an opportunity to put social justice into action in a way that impacted not only our local community, but also myself as a professional and as a human.”

CVC is hoping to make that same impact on both students and clients for years to come.

Story by Kelly Hochbein
Photos by Christa Neu